Opis ebooka The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The Power of The Coming Race is a powerful novel that fired the imagination of readers starting in the 1870's. Among the earliest examples of what would become the genre of science fiction, among many authors it influenced H. G. Wells, Samuel Butler, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book tells the story of a young American adventurer who discovers a portal to an underground world at the bottom of a mine shaft. In this world lives a highly advanced race, with a dark secret.

Opinie o ebooku The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Fragment ebooka The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (May
25, 1803–January 18, 1873) was an English novelist, poet,
playwright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular
writer of his day, who coined such phrases as "the great unwashed",
"pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the
sword", and the infamous incipit "It was a dark and stormy night."
Despite his popularity in his heyday, today his name is known as a
byword for bad writing. San Jose State University’s annual
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing is named after him.
He was the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon
Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton,
daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire.
He had two brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and
(William) Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer (1801–1872), afterwards Lord
Dalling. Lord Lytton's original surname was Bulwer, the names
'Earle' and 'Lytton' were middle names. On 20th February 1844 he
assumed the name and arms of Lytton by royal licence and his
surname then became 'Bulwer-Lytton'. His widowed mother had done
the same in 1811. His brothers were always simply surnamed
'Bulwer'. Source: Wikipedia

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Chapter1

I am a native of ____, in the United States of America. My
ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my
grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My
family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right
of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified
for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but was
signally defeated by his tailor. After that event he interfered
little in politics, and lived much in his library. I was the eldest
of three sons, and sent at the age of sixteen to the old country,
partly to complete my literary education, partly to commence my
commercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father
died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and
having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time,
all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer
over the face of the earth.

In the year 18, happening to be in __, I was invited by a
professional engineer, with whom I had made acquaintance, to visit
the recesses of the ______ mine, upon which he was employed.

The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my
reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write,
and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that
may tend to its discovery.

Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I accompanied the
engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so strangely
fascinated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested in my friend's
explorations, that I prolonged my stay in the neighbourhood, and
descended daily, for some weeks, into the vaults and galleries
hollowed by nature and art beneath the surface of the earth. The
engineer was persuaded that far richer deposits of mineral wealth
than had yet been detected, would be found in a new shaft that had
been commenced under his operations. In piercing this shaft we came
one day upon a chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, as
if burst asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. Down
this chasm my friend caused himself to be lowered in a 'cage,'
having first tested the atmosphere by the safety-lamp. He remained
nearly an hour in the abyss. When he returned he was very pale, and
with an anxious, thoughtful expression of face, very different from
its ordinary character, which was open, cheerful, and fearless.

He said briefly that the descent appeared to him unsafe, and
leading to no result; and, suspending further operations in the
shaft, we returned to the more familiar parts of the mine.

All the rest of that day the engineer seemed preoccupied by some
absorbing thought. He was unusually taciturn, and there was a
scared, bewildered look in his eyes, as that of a man who has seen
a ghost. At night, as we two were sitting alone in the lodging we
shared together near the mouth of the mine, I said to my
friend,-

"Tell me frankly what you saw in that chasm: I am sure it was
something strange and terrible. Whatever it be, it has left your
mind in a state of doubt. In such a case two heads are better than
one. Confide in me."

The engineer long endeavoured to evade my inquiries; but as,
while he spoke, he helped himself unconsciously out of the
brandy-flask to a degree to which he was wholly unaccustomed, for
he was a very temperate man, his reserve gradually melted away. He
who would keep himself to himself should imitate the dumb animals,
and drink water. At last he said, "I will tell you all. When the
cage stopped, I found myself on a ridge of rock; and below me, the
chasm, taking a slanting direction, shot down to a considerable
depth, the darkness of which my lamp could not have penetrated. But
through it, to my infinite surprise, streamed upward a steady
brilliant light. Could it be any volcanic fire? In that case,
surely I should have felt the heat. Still, if on this there was
doubt, it was of the utmost importance to our common safety to
clear it up. I examined the sides of the descent, and found that I
could venture to trust myself to the irregular projection of
ledges, at least for some way. I left the cage and clambered down.
As I drew nearer and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider,
and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road at
the bottom of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could reach by
what seemed artificial gas-lamps placed at regular intervals, as in
the thoroughfare of a great city; and I heard confusedly at a
distance a hum as of human voices. I know, of course, that no rival
miners are at work in this district. Whose could be those voices?
What human hands could have levelled that road and marshalled those
lamps?

"The superstitious belief, common to miners, that gnomes or
fiends dwell within the bowels of the earth, began to seize me. I
shuddered at the thought of descending further and braving the
inhabitants of this nether valley. Nor indeed could I have done so
without ropes, as from the spot I had reached to the bottom of the
chasm the sides of the rock sank down abrupt, smooth, and sheer. I
retraced my steps with some difficulty. Now I have told you
all."

"You will descend again?"

"I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not."

"A trusty companion halves the journey and doubles the courage.
I will go with you. We will provide ourselves with ropes of
suitable length and strength- and- pardon me- you must not drink
more to-night. our hands and feet must be steady and firm
tomorrow."

Chapter2

With the morning my friend's nerves were rebraced, and he was
not less excited by curiosity than myself. Perhaps more; for he
evidently believed in his own story, and I felt considerable doubt
of it; not that he would have wilfully told an untruth, but that I
thought he must have been under one of those hallucinations which
seize on our fancy or our nerves in solitary, unaccustomed places,
and in which we give shape to the formless and sound to the
dumb.

We selected six veteran miners to watch our descent; and as the
cage held only one at a time, the engineer descended first; and
when he had gained the ledge at which he had before halted, the
cage rearose for me. I soon gained his side. We had provided
ourselves with a strong coil of rope.

The light struck on my sight as it had done the day before on my
friend's. The hollow through which it came sloped diagonally: it
seemed to me a diffused atmospheric light, not like that from fire,
but soft and silvery, as from a northern star. Quitting the cage,
we descended, one after the other, easily enough, owing to the juts
in the side, till we reached the place at which my friend had
previously halted, and which was a projection just spacious enough
to allow us to stand abreast. From this spot the chasm widened
rapidly like the lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw distinctly
the valley, the road, the lamps which my companion had described.
He had exaggerated nothing. I heard the sounds he had heard—a
mingled indescribable hum as of voices and a dull tramp as of feet.
Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld at a distance the
outline of some large building. It could not be mere natural rock,
it was too symmetrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like columns, and
the whole lighted as from within. I had about me a small
pocket-telescope, and by the aid of this, I could distinguish, near
the building I mention, two forms which seemed human, though I
could not be sure. At least they were living, for they moved, and
both vanished within the building. We now proceeded to attach the
end of the rope we had brought with us to the ledge on which we
stood, by the aid of clamps and grappling hooks, with which, as
well as with necessary tools, we were provided.

We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men afraid to
speak to each other. One end of the rope being thus apparently made
firm to the ledge, the other, to which we fastened a fragment of
the rock, rested on the ground below, a distance of some fifty
feet. I was a younger man and a more active man than my companion,
and having served on board ship in my boyhood, this mode of transit
was more familiar to me than to him. In a whisper I claimed the
precedence, so that when I gained the ground I might serve to hold
the rope more steady for his descent. I got safely to the ground
beneath, and the engineer now began to lower himself. But he had
scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when the fastenings,
which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather the rock itself
proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the strain; and the unhappy
man was precipitated to the bottom, falling just at my feet, and
bringing down with his fall splinters of the rock, one of which,
fortunately but a small one, struck and for the time stunned me.
When I recovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass
beside me, life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his
corpse in grief and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound
between a snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the
quarter from which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in
the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull,
ghastly, hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile resembling
that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger than the
largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels. I
started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost speed. I
stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, and returned to
the spot on which I had left the body of my friend. It was gone;
doubtless the monster had already drawn it into its den and
devoured it. The rope and the grappling-hooks still lay where they
had fallen, but they afforded me no chance of return; it was
impossible to re-attach them to the rock above, and the sides of
the rock were too sheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I
was alone in this strange world, amidst the bowels of the
earth.

Chapter3

Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit
road and towards the large building I have described. The road
itself seemed like a great Alpine pass, skirting rocky mountains of
which the one through whose chasm I had descended formed a link.
Deep below to the left lay a vast valley, which presented to my
astonished eye the unmistakeable evidences of art and culture.
There were fields covered with a strange vegetation, similar to
none I have seen above the earth; the colour of it not green, but
rather of a dull and leaden hue or of a golden red.

There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved
into artificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone like
pools of naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened
amidst the rocks, with passes between, evidently constructed by
art, and bordered by trees resembling, for the most part, gigantic
ferns, with exquisite varieties of feathery foliage, and stems like
those of the palm-tree. Others were more like the cane-plant, but
taller, bearing large clusters of flowers. Others, again, had the
form of enormous fungi, with short thick stems supporting a wide
dome-like roof, from which either rose or drooped long slender
branches. The whole scene behind, before, and beside me far as the
eye could reach, was brilliant with innumerable lamps. The world
without a sun was bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon,
but the air less oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene
before me void of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a
distance, whether on the banks of the lake or rivulet, or half-way
upon eminences, embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings that must
surely be the homes of men. I could even discover, though far off,
forms that appeared to me human moving amidst the landscape. As I
paused to gaze, I saw to the right, gliding quickly through the
air, what appeared a small boat, impelled by sails shaped like
wings. It soon passed out of sight, descending amidst the shades of
a forest. Right above me there was no sky, but only a cavernous
roof. This roof grew higher and higher at the distance of the
landscapes beyond, till it became imperceptible, as an atmosphere
of haze formed itself beneath.

Continuing my walk, I started,—from a bush that resembled a
great tangle of sea-weeds, interspersed with fern-like shrubs and
plants of large leafage shaped like that of the aloe or
prickly-pear,—a curious animal about the size and shape of a deer.
But as, after bounding away a few paces, it turned round and gazed
at me inquisitively, I perceived that it was not like any species
of deer now extant above the earth, but it brought instantly to my
recollection a plaster cast I had seen in some museum of a variety
of the elk stag, said to have existed before the Deluge. The
creature seemed tame enough, and, after inspecting me a moment or
two, began to graze on the singular herbiage around undismayed and
careless.

Chapter4

I now came in full sight of the building. Yes, it had been made
by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I should have
supposed it at the first glance to have been of the earliest form
of Egyptian architecture. It was fronted by huge columns, tapering
upward from massive plinths, and with capitals that, as I came
nearer, I perceived to be more ornamental and more fantastically
graceful that Egyptian architecture allows. As the Corinthian
capital mimics the leaf of the acanthus, so the capitals of these
columns imitated the foliage of the vegetation neighbouring them,
some aloe-like, some fern-like. And now there came out of this
building a form—human;—was it human? It stood on the broad way and
looked around, beheld me and approached. It came within a few yards
of me, and at the sight and presence of it an indescribable awe and
tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the ground. It reminded me of
symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on Etruscan
vases or limned on the walls of Eastern sepulchres—images that
borrow the outlines of man, and are yet of another race. It was
tall, not gigantic, but tall as the tallest man below the height of
giants.

Its chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings
folded over its breast and reaching to its knees; the rest of its
attire was composed of an under tunic and leggings of some thin
fibrous material. It wore on its head a kind of tiara that shone
with jewels, and carried in its right hand a slender staff of
bright metal like polished steel. But the face! it was that which
inspired my awe and my terror. It was the face of man, but yet of a
type of man distinct from our known extant races. The nearest
approach to it in outline and expression is the face of the
sculptured sphinx—so regular in its calm, intellectual, mysterious
beauty. Its colour was peculiar, more like that of the red man than
any other variety of our species, and yet different from it—a
richer and a softer hue, with large black eyes, deep and brilliant,
and brows arched as a semicircle. The face was beardless; but a
nameless something in the aspect, tranquil though the expression,
and beauteous though the features, roused that instinct of danger
which the sight of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this
manlike image was endowed with forces inimical to man. As it drew
near, a cold shudder came over me. I fell on my knees and covered
my face with my hands.